In 2024, Bow Arts celebrates a decade of bringing arts-based learning to schools across the borough of Newham.

For the past decade, Bow Arts has worked closely with a number of schools across Newham, to create and deliver meaningful arts-based learning experiences reaching over 7,000 local children & young people, and over 500 teachers.

We have brought to life over 100 bespoke projects – building outdoor sculptures, designing permanent murals, exploring zine-making, experimenting with clay-making, to name a few. Our projects are designed to directly responds to schools’ unique learning aims and areas of development, as identified by schools themselves.

We’ve been grateful to work alongside our artist educators with seven schools that make up the Sarah Bonnell Consortium, as well as as eight Newham schools & organisations across the borough.

Read on for project highlights, and find the full report at the bottom of the page.

‘Partnering with Bow Arts has changed how I teach art. They’ve brought fresh ideas, materials, & ideas of how to deliver content to our pupils. I have been able to apply [that] with more confidence now. Watching the pupils grow creatively through their projects has been inspiring. It is amazing to see how much the pupils’ knowledge & skills have improved.’

Teacher

Learning and Developing Skills: Sculptural Lanterns with Anne Harild

In Summer 2019, artist Anne Harild worked with sixty Year 2 children at Selwyn Primary School to collaboratively produce their own large-scale sculptural lanterns.

Working in groups, pupils learned about a range of artists and art techniques, prompting them to consider large scale three-dimensional perspectives and to develop dexterity in cutting and sticking.

The idea for the project was inspired by Selwyn’s curriculum topic of Florence Nightingale, nicknamed ‘The Lady with the Lamp’, as a way of thinking about light sources, how light can be expanded, reflected and produce shadows.

The process of creating magnificent geometric light sculpture pieces, pupils were introduced to conversations linking art, history and science.

‘The children had the opportunity to work with a contemporary artist. This allowed children to see how an artist works and share her experiences as an artist.’

Teacher

  

Enhancing Environments: Tulip Trees with Miyuki Kasahara

In Spring 2023, Sculptor and mixed media artist Miyuki Kasahara worked with four Key Stage 2 classes at Sandringham Primary School to produce a series of outdoor artworks.

‘We were surprised at how much the students were able to achieve, especially those younger ones in Years 2 & 3, when things were introduced in a patient, step-by-step approach.’

Teacher

The ‘tulip trees’ were inspired by the life and work of eighteenth-century physician John Fothergill, who created a sizeable botanical garden nearby in what is now West Ham Park.

The pieces are made up of breeze block pillars containing living bug hotels, and adorned with fired and glazed moths, botanical watercolours transferred onto tiles, and topped with cast concrete tulips.

Students were involved in all stages – designing, researching, sketching, painting, sculpting, firing and finally in building the bug hotels.

‘A student managed to create a couple of clay moth sculptures from the sessions. You could tell that the second work was much improved than the first. For example, the second moth’s wings were much more sharply sculpted, and the body balance was better. He got more used to the clay materials and observed the moth in more detail too.‘

Artist Educator

Full report here:

Physical copies of the report are available upon request from learning@bowarts.com

You can view more reports on our Learning Reports page here, and info on past school projects, click here.

What is a Consortium?

Made up of a partnership of schools in a local area, each Consortium works in partnerships to enable schools to pool resources and support relationships between neighbouring schools. By creating networks of collaboration and support, the consortia partnerships enable schools to provide a more robust arts education offer for their students.

Find out more about Bow Arts’ consortia model here.